This blog is intended to share what we are learning in 5th grade through reflections, pictures, videos, and more! Comments are encouraged and welcome! If you have a positive comment about anything you see, please feel free to share, and we will respond as soon as we can. Thanks for looking!

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Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Thanksgiving Meal Budget Project

During the week of Thanksgiving, we put our math workshop on hold as we worked on a mini project in groups of 2-3 planning a Thanksgiving meal. We have this blog post to thank because that's where I (Mrs.Allen) got the idea late Sunday night. Since it sounded like something practical, fun, and perfect for the holiday season, we took the plunge and spent our math time on Monday and Tuesday working on it.

So how did it work?

First, we had some guidelines to follow:

plan a Thanksgiving meal to feed 6 people--including a main course of some kind and some side dishes (desserts and beverages were optional)

$40 was the budget, so we had to spend as close to that as possible--without going over

the money could only be spent on food (condiments, flatware, and dishes excluded from the budget)

Next, we collaborated with our group (2-3 students/group) to decide on what kind of meal we wanted by looking through some actual advertisements from our local grocery stores (Aldi, Price Cutter, Dillon's, Hy-Vee, etc.).

Then as we decided on each menu item for our meal, we had to deduct the cost on our budget sheet.

Here's an example of one of our budget sheets.

When we were through, we created a poster to display our Thanksgiving meal, presented it to the rest of our class, and posted them in the hallway outside our classroom door to share with the rest of our school.

**Please note: this entire idea was derived from HERE, so CLICK HERE to read more about where this original idea came from and get more ideas for how to implement it into your classroom.

1 comment:

I love this activity. I made it a little more challenging for my higher students by making the budget $100 and giving the groups a choice between 6-8 people. I kept it the way it was presented for those students needing extra support. I had seen similar ideas but for 5th grade or higher. This one suits perfect for my high and low performing 4th graders since they have yet to cover fractions or discuss decimal in depths. Thank you.